The Acheron's destiny
by The Kraken
Summary: After the wars of AC 195-6, nearly all Mobile Suits are destroyed. But pirates have managed to salvage some, and now the ESUN is too weak to fight them off. Tension builds as people demand for protection, and will the Preventers be able to handle this s


Gundam Acheron - by The Kraken

Disclaimers: Gundam Wing and all its affiliated characters and so forth aren't mine, I understand and acknowledge that I have no right to make any money off of this story and all that junk.

But anyone who wants to send me money anyway can send me an e-mail and I'll give them my address. Cheques, cash, and money order accepted.

Note: Acheron is pronounced (at least by me) "ACK-er-on", with the emphasis on the first syllable.

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**Gundam Acheron.**

It was a sunny day, like almost every other day, and wind was non-existant. The grass was a light shade of green, pleasant to view. It was a day to get outside and enjoy, which almost everybody was doing anyway.

Which was why the young man was practically the only person in the cemetary. He was kneeling in front of three gravestones, a family lot with space open for an as-yet-unadded fourth grave.

"Mother and Father. I never really knew you, but I hope that you will be proud of me. I have finally found the faith in myself necessary to pursue my own dreams. This isn't for you, it's for me. Uncle, I may have inherited your name, but I have finally realized that I don't want to inherit your legacy as well. I must make my own legacy, and it shall be as grandiose as yours, don't you worry. And as for you, my other uncle, I still remember you well, despite the fact that you never had any grave nor memorial. To you do I owe all the skills that I will have to use in order to fufill my vision. I love you all, and I'll see you again next year."

The young man straightened and turned. He was handsome, maybe twenty-one or two, with medium-length spiked black hair. He had a powerful and commanding presence to him, as if he were used to being one step ahead of the rest of the pack. He nodded to the custodian and strode out of the cemetary.

A lily rested on each of the tombs. Anyone inspecting them would have found the following names:

_Olan Lowe, 158-182.  
Serena Yuy-Lowe, 160-182.  
Heero Yuy, 153-175._

********************************************************************************** 

In the cold blackness of space, between the L1 and L2 colony clusters, a freighter sped along. It was fully loaded with all sorts of valuable goodies and was probably worth a small fortune. In the old days it would have been inconceivable for such a freighter to have less than a half dozen Moblie Suits escorting it, but nowadays no one had enough military hardware to hold up a donkey, let alone a space freighter.

On the cluttered and comfortable bridge, obviously designed for civilians and not for military personnel, everyone lounged around. This job was incredibly easy. Nothing ever broke down since the ship was guaranteed to last in perfect condition for at least twenty years since construction, and it was built just last year.

A blip on the sensors revealed another ship approaching them from dead ahead. The radar technician glanced up at it from his game of cards with the navigator, then called out to the captain,

"Hey, capn! Looks like someone else is running on this route."

The captain looked up from his book.

"Who is it?"

"I dunno. It looks like an old OZ MS carrier. It was probably converted into a mobile warehouse, I remember that those things had so much empty space inside them."

"Oh well. Is it about to crash into us?"

"No."

"Then forget about it. You're disturbing my reading enough as it is."

Before the bridge crew could return to their normal routine, the front four bay doors on the carrier opened, and out dropped four Mobile Suits. One was red, another was blue, a third was gold, and the last was green. They zipped to positions around the carrier, surrounding it. The blue and green ones were armed solely with what appeared to be beam cannons, and the red and gold ones held powerful beam sabers in one hand and small beam pistols in the other, and had a bunch of circular disks resting on their backs.

"What the hell? Has anyone ever seen suits like these before?" the captain asked in horrified amazement.

"No," the navigator said, "but they look kinda like the Virgo's."

An audio only transmission came through to them. A cold voice reverberated throughout the bridge.

"You have just lost possession of your freighter. You can surrender and all pile into the escape pods and survive, or you can attempt some sort of half-baked resistance and die in horrible agony. The choice is yours."

"Who the hell are you?" the captain demanded angrily of the voice.

"I don't think that you need to know that. I would think that the opportunity to walk out of here alive was enough for you," the voice said, " but since you need some persuading..."

Suddenly the red and gold Mobile suits opened fire on the freighter with their beam pistols. Actual physical damage was pretty minimal, but it convinced the civilian crew, who weren't being paid to die, that the hijackers were serious.

"Alright, alright." the captain said in submission. "Do you guarantee that you'll let us live if we jettison?"

"Yes."

"How will we be rescued?"

"When I am in control of the vessel, I'll transmit an emergency message, and then we'll get out of here before the rescue party arrives."

"Very well then. Give us five minutes to get to the pods and launch them."

********************************************************************************** 

_"And now for a piece of breaking news, we have just recieved notification that a goods transport freighter has just been hijacked near the L3 Colony Cluster. This makes it the fifth freighter to be hijacked since the 'Saudi Jacintha' was hijacked in between the L1 and L2 Colony Clusters. Like in all the other cases, the hijackers used Mobile Suits of an unknown type, and let the entire crew escape. Since that first attempt, several other groups of Mobile Suits have also done similar hijackings, but none have pulled off their attempts as cleanly as this first group. We now go live to Jim Mackleson for an interview with the survivors of this latest act of piracy."_

Lady Une stopped the tape. She looked at the assembled Preventers.

"That was taped from the Inter-Cluster News at six two nights ago. The following segment was taken from the news last night."

She pressed play, and sat back as the handsome face of a young man, in his early twenties, with his black hair in tousled spikes, appeared on the screen.

_"My name is Heero Yuy. All of you know of the original owner of that name. It originally belonged to my uncle, and my parents gave it to me when I was born, in his honour. My uncle envisioned a world where guns and weapons would not be needed, and it has appeared for the last few years that his dream was achieved. But now we find that all that has happened is that some rogue mercenaries or other scum have merely taken advantage of our peaceful lives to set up their reign of terror. Who here can say that they do not turn on their television sets and wonder when the next attack will be reported? Such fear may have been appropriate in the previous century, but in the year 203 it is ridiculous to have to live our lives wondering when we will next be victimized. It is time to not only get rid of these brutish vandals, but also to set up a force to ensure that such events never happen again. I issue the following demand to the Earth Sphere Unified Nation on the behalf of us all. I demand that a special task of Mobile Suits be set up to root out all threats to the peace and security of the colonies! Only with such a shield will we ever be safe! For the sake of not only ourselves, but also the sake of future generations, let us provide such a shield!"_

The tape segment came to an end, and Lady Une ejected the tape. She once again faced the Preventers who had just watched the rather startling proclamation.

"Some of you may have met Heero Yuy during the wars of 195 and 196. He was one the pilots of the Gundams. He was committed then to fighting to protect the common person from all of the horrors of fighting, and he was always somewhat scornful of the idea of total pacifism. It now appears that he feels that we need to set up a new group of pilots to ensure the peace of this new era. Unfortunately for us, the Preventers' low profile has worked to his advantage, because he apparently wants a new and separate organization, responsible to himself, to be in charge of using Mobile Suits to protect the peace."

One of the officers raised his hand to ask a question. Lady Une acknowledged him with a nod of her head, and he asked,

"Have we managed to identify the Mobile Suits used by the pirates?"

"As a matter of fact, yes Captain Chang, we have. All of the copycat pirate groups are using Space Type Leos, with the occasional commander using a Taurus. The original and biggest group appears to operate out of an old OZ Mobile Suit carrier. Unlike the other groups, who apparently leave survivors by accident, this group deliberately allows the entire crew to evacuate. From the reports that we have recieved, I have determined that they are using the Mercurius and Vayeate, and a copy of each, to hold up their targets. The Mercurius and Vayeate were originally developed under my orders to provide Oz with Mobile Suits better than the Gundams. They were destroyed in a confrontation with Wing Zero, then reconstructed by White Fang, and then it was believed that they were finally destroyed by Duo Maxwell in the prelude to the Eve Wars. We have no idea how someone would have been able to rebuild them without our knowledge, because we have been trying to prevent this from happening."

Captain Chang put his hand up again.

"Why don't we step forward with a Mobile Suit force of our own and announce that we will handle the protection of the colonies?"

Lady Une smiled ruefully at that.

"Because, despite the fact that we are a collection of the best fighter aces of the Mobile Suit Wars, we only have one space-worthy suit. It's a Serpent left over from the Mariemaia incident, that is the personal property of Miss Mariemaia herself. It's not public knowledge, and she's loath to get rid of what she sees as the best reminder of her father's way of life. Until we can find some way to track down and eliminate these pirates, we'll just have to keep pressure up on the government not to bow to public pressure and go along with Heero's demands."

"I knew Heero during the wars," a woman in her late twenties with twin braids running down the sides of her neck said. "and he never really was one to speak a lot. Where did he suddenly develop this talent for public speaking?"

"People will do whatever is necessary to accomplish something that they believe in strongly enough," Lady Une answered, "as you should know quite well Sally. And this seems to be something that Heero Yuy belives in very strongly."

********************************************************************************** 

"What are you doing Heero?" a young woman asked herself, reading his latest demand on the front page of the newspaper. "You know that what you're proposing is nothing more than a temporary solution."

Heero had rocketed from relative obscurity to international popularity in a matter of weeks. Earth hadn't been hit by renegade Mobile Suits, and so didn't feel that pressured to start manufacturing them in order to counter a threat that they saw as more of a paper tiger than anything else. The colonies though, felt very insecure about the sudden aggression being waged upon them, and they saw Heero as their saviour. Already there was a lot of talk of appointing him as Chief Representative for all of the colonies.

"You can't blame them, Miss Relena." said Mariemaia. "The people of the colonies just want to live their lives peacefully and in security, and Heero's offering them both."

"I know, I know. But that doesn't make it any more right." Relena sighed. "At least Heero's overcome his antisocial side."

Mariemaia looked over at her boss. At the age of twenty-three, she was without question the most powerful and influential person in the entire Earth Sphere. Her refusal to run for president meant that she had endured beyond public opinion, and she had been quickly promoted to the position of Foreign Minister upon reaching the age of majority. As the only person universally popular both on Earth and on the colonies, she was often called upon to mediate disputes or give rulings. Mariemaia herself had joined her staff a year ago, and the bright young redhead's insight had often proven invaluable.

"Miss Relena, there's something that bothers me about this whole thing."

"And what's that Mariemaia? It's the whole thing bothers me."

"Yes, well. My mother has identified the suits that the original group is using as the Mercurius and the Vayeate. Have you ever heard of them?"

Relena smiled at Mariemaia's reference to her 'mother'. She had come to genuinely accept Lady Une as her mother, and it seemed to be perfectly natural to her. Relena answered the young girl,

"Yes, I actually have. I saw them once, years ago, just before the Eve Wars. Weren't they originally piloted by Heero and Trowa?"

"Right. Those suits are basically Gundams. They're incredibly high-powered, and only exceptional pilots or a Mobile Doll system could handle them effectively. But not only that, they're made out of Gundanium, which is incredibly hard to get and is consequently closely monitored. And finally, those suits were experimental prototypes. They never saw a major battle, they were only ever used in limited skirmishes. So the number of people who know anything about them is very small."

"And let me guess. We know exacly where anyone who is able to pilot them is. No shipments of Gundanium have mysteriously disappeared. Which means that they've probably been reconstructed by one of a limited list of technicians, and are currently being piloted by the Mobile Doll system."

"Right. And all of the Mobile Doll systems have since been hunted down by the Preventers and destroyed. Not only that, but the actual damage inflicted by this group seems to be minimal, but they've caused massive psycological damage to the people of the colonies."

"So what the hell is going on?"

"I don't know, but it seems to me that there's something fishy going on here."

"And you want to get to the bottom of it?" Relena laughed at the young girl's eagerness. "You're so easy to predict Mariemaia, so don't bother to deny it. Alright then, tomorrow I'll make a proclamation making Mariemaia Une the Vice-Foreign Minister, and I'll assign you to see what can be done about this situation."

Mariemaia rushed forward and gave Relena a great big hug.

"Oh, thank you Miss Relena! I won't disappoint you, I promise!"

"I know you won't. Now, can you let go of me? I have a speech to write."

********************************************************************************** 

_"... And despite her youth, I am sure that you will all find Miss Une to be more than able to handle any concerns on this issue. Thank you all so very much. After all, I was nearly as young as she is when I first took the position that I am now appointing her to. Thank you all for your time, and God watch over you all."_

The man watched the transmission from his position in the command chair of the deserted bridge of his OZ carrier. The chair used to be a tactical control centre, but some slight modifications had enabled the man to control the entire ship from one position. He was actually quite lucky, to have been able to salvage the remains of this vessel from the debris of former battles. Once the flagship of Colonel Sedici, it had been badly damaged by a blast from Libra, but was still partially intact. As an added bonus, the Mobile Doll control system that it had been fairly unique in carrying was in near-pristine condition, so he was able to control his Gundam Dolls too.

He was fighting a one-man war, and so far he was winning. But the little girl could present a problem. He smiled grimly. He might even have to get himself involved in a major battle, but he was fairly sure that he could plan for that eventuality.

********************************************************************************** 

Mariemaia stepped off the shuttle and looked around. It had been many years since she had been on a colony, and she had never been in a heavily populated one, so the experience was somewhat new to her. Several men were waiting to her, but only one of them stood out. She had only seen him face-to-face once, and he was admittedly trying to kill her then, but she recognized him clearly.

"It's good to see you, Vice-Foreign Minister. Allow me to welcome to the L1 colony cluster. I understand that this is your first visit here, so I hope that you enjoy yourself."

No mention of himself, no trumpeting of his importance. Heero Yuy was as self-effacing as ever, but he was now so charismatic about it that all it did was reinforce his presence in one's mind.

"Thank you, Mr. Yuy." she said. "I do hope that I enjoy myself too."

The rest of people were the usual political packrats, and despite their best efforts they left no impression on Mariemaia. She could see how Heero had been able to rise to the top so quickly, with this as his opposition. In fact, he was rather like Miss Relena in that. People were left with the feeling that here was someone who would not pander to you just to be popular, here was someone who would do what they believed in and wouldn't attempt to sugar-coat it.

"Miss Une, if you would step this way, there is a car waiting for you."

He joined her in the black limo, after holding the door for her. He sat next to her since it wasn't a stretch model, and Mariemaia was once again struck by his easy confidence.

"You know what, Heero?" she asked him.

He smiled at the use of his first name, and replied in the same manner.

"What, Mariemaia?"

"Relena never mentioned how charismatic you were."

He laughed at that.

"No, I can't imagine that she would have. To tell the truth, I have only recently decided to be nice to people. In years previous I was always a bit anti-social."

"You know what else? I have never forgotten you, and I can still remember perfectly how you appeared when you appeared to kill me. Nothing else sticks in my mind except for my mother taking care of me."

"Not exactly a happy memory, but it's nice to see that you can remember me clearly when the last time we met was half of your lifetime ago. Speaking of your mother, how is she?"

"Well, she's alright, I guess. Right now she's as pissed off with you as can be, but I guess that's because everything that you advocate is a challenge to her. And she doesn't like competition."

"I know. I remember Lady Une rather well, as a matter of fact. Of course, she was my sworn enemy then, and we were both doing our level best to kill each other. I nearly succeeded too, once. Ah, it looks like we're here. Allow me to get the door for you."

As she stepped out into the hotel's parking lot, he added quietly so that only she could hear,

"By the way, that's a very nice dress. I always thought that both Relena and Lady Une look great in blue, and I think that I'll have to add you to that list."

********************************************************************************** 

Lady Une waited impatiently for the call. Mariemaia had promised to call her as soon as she got settled in at the hotel, but she was taking far longer than Lady Une had anticipated. When the vidphone finally rang, she had to take a moment to compose herself before answering. Mariemaia's face appeared on the screen, slighly flushed.

"Hello Mariemaia," Anne Une said, "what took you so long?"

"Heero was showing me everything about the colony. Oh mother, why didn't you ever say how charming he was?"

"Charming? Heero?" Lady Une repeated somewhat incredulously. "It must have slipped my mind." she added sarcastically.

"Yeah, the way that he stands out from the crowd is amazing. I can't believe that he wasn't appointed Chief Representative years ago!"

There was something else that Lady Une had noticed and couldn't quite bring herself to believe.

"Mariemaia Une! Have you been drinking?"

Instantly, the slight flush on her face spread to a full blush. Being busted by a parent over the phone may not have been as bad as being busted in person, but that wasn't very consoling for Mariemaia. Lady Une had a **very** long memory when it came to disobedience.

"Just a couple of glasses." she mumbled. "Heero got them for me. He said that it was the colony's greatest achievement, having a wine grape plantation."

"I swear that I should have killed him when I had the chance years ago. I had caught him, red-handed, trying to destroy a project and kill me, and I made him part of the project instead."

"What project was that mother?" Mariemaia asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Oh, it was nothing really, just the Mercurius and Vayeate development project."

"Heero tried to destroy that?"

"Of course. His enemy was developing Gundams to rival his own, and he couldn't allow that. He's not one for tolerating competition, is Heero."

"Hah! There's no competition against him here, everyone's just your average wimp of a politician. I don't think that I'll have any problems with any of them."

"Except Heero." Lady Une reminded her. "Don't forget, he's advocating something that we're opposed to, and he has a lot more influence than you do."

"You're right. I kinda forgot about that. It's just that he's going to be so hard to keep under control."

"Precisely. That's why you're going to be getting some help soon."

"Help?"

"I've sent Wufei up with your Serpent and a Taurus that we managed to drag out of whatever dark hole Noin hid it in. Quatre will be using the Maguenac Corps to patrol the L4 area, which should keep the pirates away from there and should provide Heero with less ammo. Duo's going to see what he can dig up from those scrap heaps that he makes a living off of. Trowa's going to show up with his own Serpent. And last, but not least, the administrator of the Mars project will be bringing his Mobile Suit into the fray."

"You mean uncle Zechs? And the Tallgeese?"

"Yep. Now, you figure out what's going on there and take care of it. The last thing that we need is Mobile Suit battles getting out of hand."

********************************************************************************** 

In the end Mariemaia had to put off Heero's insistent proposals and demands by publically offering to use the few remaining "holdovers" from the Mobile Suit wars of the last century to eliminate the bandits. This was something else that Miss Relena and Lady Une hadn't told her about; the constant pressure to do anything and everything at once.

That was how she ended up in the cockpit of her Serpent, homing in rapidly on where Wufei had predicted the next attack would occur. They arrived just in time, as the enemy launched its suits at the defenseless freighter. There were about thirty or so Space Type Leos, and the leader had a Taurus.

"Let's get them!" she told Wufei, and she launched herself at the enemy, firing a spray from her twin gatling to distract them from the freighter. Wufei followed her, forgoing using the Taurus' usual beam cannon and beam rifle and using instead the two beam sabers that this model was equipped with.

The enemy however were not beginners, and they quickly moved into battle formation. Although she had done some basic training and had good battle instincts, this was Mariemaia's first battle and she was very inexperienced and consequently didn't watch her ammo supplies. She fired all of her missiles at a pack of three Leos, resulting in a massive overkill. After using her gatling almost continuously for most of the battle, she suddenly found it running dry.

"Uhh, Wufei..." she called.

Wufei looked up from slicing a Leo in two. He wasn't doing so well either, since the only Mobile Suit that he had ever piloted was Nataku, but at least he was able to use close combat weapons. If he had been expected to use the rifle or cannon somewhat accurately then he would have been totally screwed over. Accuracy was, for Wufei, something that happened to other people. Trowa and Heero were the ones with the precision aim, Wufei was the expert on hacking and slashing.

Wufei moved his Taurus in front of Mariemaia's Serpent to protect the now defenseless girl. There were about a dozen Leos left, plus the commander's Taurus, and Wufei knew that he couldn't take them all on and protect Mariemaia and the civilian freighter at the same time.

"Damn the weak," he muttered, "damn their hides for getting me into this mess."

The enemy commander was laughing openly over the comm channels at Wufei's predicament.

"You may have destroyed a lot of my group's suits," he chuckled, "but we can rebuild them. And when we add your suits to our forces you'll only have succeeded in making us stronger."

He leveled his beam cannon at Wufei and Mariemaia and was about to fire, when suddenly a missile surged out of the depths of space and blew his arm off. Wufei quickly scanned the battlefield and saw something that both amazed and horrified him at the same time. For a Gundam hung in the cold space behind them, a Gundam that Wufei had never seen before, but that only added to how much it scared him.

It superficially resembled the Wing Zero that Heero had made into his personal Mobile Suit during the wars of the past century, but there were some significant differences. For starters, it was huge. Only the Tallgeese suits could have hoped to match its size, and even that was in doubt. The next thing was the fact that it had four wing binders and double the number of verniers scattered around its body, giving it, Wufei estimated, twice the speed and maneuverability of the Wing Zero. Its firepower was also substantially greater, with Heavyarms style missile pods on its legs, and a pair of beam cannons mounted on a "stinger tail" reminiscent of the Altron. Not only that, but even the double buster rifle looked deadlier.

The unknown Gundam drew a huge beam saber, of the style that had been used by Epyon, and rocketed forward in a charge. Wufei admitted to himself while watching it in action that he had underestimated both the suit's close combat capabilities and its efficency at dispatching enemies. As it cut two Leos to pieces with one mighty sword stroke, a pair of long articulated heat rods shot out of the shield and smashed through another two Leos. The shoulder gatlings and head vulcans opened fire, instantly decimating a third pair of Leos, and the twin beam cannons opened fire and blew through a Leo each. The missile pods on the legs were equally busy, and they fired enough missiles to easily destroy the remaining four Leos.

The commander was by now loading his pants. He had been an OZ officer during the Mobile Suit wars of the last century, and he had once seen a Gundam in action. Although that Gundam years ago had seemed like a raging god of destruction, this Gundam that he faced now easily put that old Gundam to shame. The commander had barely enough time to register that it was turning towards him before his cockpit was completely destroyed by a heat rod punching through his Taurus' torso.

The Gundam didn't stop there though. Judging all of the enemy suits effectively subdued, it turned its attention instead on the pirate carriers. With one fluid motion, it drew the double buster rifle from its resting place on the underside of the shield, split it in two, and aimed one rifle at each of the carriers. As motes of light began to gather around the nozzles of the rifles, the carrier crews realized what was about to happen to them and attempted to get out of the way. They might as well have attempted to avoid a volcano or a tsunami, for each blast was so powerful that it swept away the carriers as if they had been scraps of plastic in the path of a blowtorch.

The Gundam turned and regarded Wufei and Mariemaia for a moment, then it moved as if to leave. Wufei sped in front of it.

"Wait! Who are you? Why did you help us?"

The Gundam just regarded him silently for a minute, its pilot was not apparently the talkative type. Then it turned slightly and looked in the direction of the L2 Cluster. Wufei checked his sensors and saw a pair of Taurus suits approaching at full speed. The gundam turned in the opposite direction and blasted off at its own breathtaking maximum speed. Since Wufei had no chance of catching up with it, he turned his attention instead to the newcomers. They turned out to be Duo and Hilde.

"Hey Wufie!" Duo chirped over the comm. "Look what we managed to put together from scraps!"

"It looks like you were busy." Hilde said, indicating the debris that littered the battlefield. "What was that suit that got away just before we could get into visual sensor range?"

"You didn't see it?" Wufei asked.

"No, why?"

"Oh, nothing. It was just a pirate Taurus. Your arrival distracted me, and it took the opportunity to scoot off."

Mariemaia couldn't understand why Wufei would lie to his best friends. What was wrong with telling them about the Gundam?

"Hey, Wufie." Duo said. "You really did a number on these carriers. How'd you do it?"

"What is this, Maxwell," Wufei answered, obviously annoyed. "a game of twenty questions? Let's head home."

********************************************************************************** 

Their four Mobile Suits were regarded oddly by the residents of of the colony. Here were supposed total pacifists using the greatest symbols for war that humanity had ever developed, and that wasn't a paradox? Mariemaia did her very level best, helped by Hilde, to convince the population of the colony that these were merely relics dragged out of junkyards, and that they were only being used temporarily to solve this particular problem before being decommissioned once again.

Heero wasn't having any of it. He touted their victory against the pirates as proof that a small and dedicated defense force was able to adequately protect the colonies. The vid-nets were broadcasting his speeches almost constantly.

_"I ask then how the Earth Sphere Unified Nation expects us to live with a 'temporary' defense force when the problem is clearly a reccuring one. The fact that they were able to find these suits on such short notice only goes to show how easy it would be for less well-meaning parties to acquire them. I say that these suits should be given over to a permanent colony defense force, controlled by the colonies themselves, so that our safety is always assured."_

His election as Chief Representative for all colonies was almost unanimous, but he was as calm and modest about it as he was about all of his recent accomplishments. And, oddly enough, despite the fact that they were set against each other politically, Heero always found the time to go out with his former comrades and reminisce about the good old days.

Wufei had made some discrete inquiries as to Heero's whereabouts during the space battle with the pirates, but Heero had somehow found out what he was doing and had come to talk to Wufei personally. The fact that the location he chose was Wufei's locked bedroom slightly unnerved the Preventer Captain. He had opened his hotel room door, turned on the lights, and nearly had an aneurism at the sight of Heero sitting calmly in one of the room's opulent chairs.

"What are you doing here?" he had demanded. "And how did you get in?"

"Don't be a fool Wufei," Heero had replied calmly. "I picked the lock. I do still remember a large part of my training, as I'm sure you do. As for why I'm here... Well, I understand that you have some questions about me. I'm here to answer them in person."

Although he was a bit rattled by Heero's behaviour, Wufei proceeded.

"Okay then, where were you last Thursday morning?"

"You mean, where was I while you were out fighting space pirates?" Heero asked with a raised eyebrow. "I was busy talking to people in my office. I had an election campaign to take care of, if you remember."

"Okay then, if you say so. But Heero, there's one thing that intrigues me about you now. How come you've suddenly changed everything? You used to support Relena's dream of total pacifism, you used to be anti-social, you didn't use to be such a snappy dresser. What happened?"

Heero smiled. It was a small, slightly self-satisfied smile, as if he had just won some sort of victory.

"I was waiting for Duo to ask me that, but apparently the american brat's as self-centered as ever and hasn't even noticed anything past the fact that I'm advocating re-armament." Heero stood, and Wufei was struck with the powerful presence that he seemed to radiate. It was as if an aura of confidence and self-conviction flowed out from his body. "About a year ago I finally came to grips with the fact that I had been spending my life in servitude to other people's dreams, and that I had neglected my own. Now I will carry out my vision for the colonies, a vision that will protect and guide them. I would suggest that you too take a while to consider if you are your own master, or if you're merely carrying out someone else's vision."

And with that he left Wufei to consider what he had said.

********************************************************************************** 

"You know what, Relena?" Lady Une asked the younger woman.

Relena looked up from the latest written demand by the colonies' Chief Representative. She seemed to be rather unhappy with the situation, and Lady Une knew that she felt almost betrayed by Heero.

"What now, Lady Une? If it's more demands from Heero you can go stuff them where the sun don't shine. I thought that Mariemaia would be able to handle Heero, but it looks like I underestimated him."

"Well, it's not a demand, it's more of an offer." She handed a sheet to Relena. "He's offering to host a conference, with all the major Earth and Colony leaders present."

"Where he's no doubt going to use his momentum to manipulate everyone into agreeing with him. At least he's learned all the political tools. Let me guess, you and I are on the list of people that he's invited."

"Can't get anything past you. We had better get a serious plan together if we want to stand up to Heero."

********************************************************************************** 

Relena's shuttle launched two days later. On board were most of the important European politicians, including the President. Lady Une had announded that she would be taking a later shuttle, and so she wasn't on board. Two cylindrical rockets would be travelling with the shuttle, carrying security personel for the politicians. She was busy discussing her counter-proposals with the President when the first real indication of trouble came.

Several old OZ Mobile Suit carriers appeared and headed for the shuttle, correctly guessing that the rockets would have minimal weaponry. In fact, they each had a pair of beam cannons. Nothing big, but fairly damaging nonetheless. As the carriers launched their cargo of Leos, and a few Taurus suits to boot, the rockets underwent a remarkable transformation. They shed their outer hulls to reveal Taurus carriers, the sort that hold three Taurus suits around a thin core. Each of these escort rockets then launched its three white Taurus suits, which took up defensive positions around the shuttle.

Even though Relena knew that these were the crack pilots of the Preventers, led by Lady Une, she also knew that they had no real hope against the pirates. They were outnumbered at least thirteen to one, and they didn't have Gundams. Their only hope was to hold the pirates off long enough for the shuttle to reach the safety provided by a colony's defense cannons. The shuttle's pilots had already called ahead in an attempt to get Mariemaia and her friends out as quickly as possible, hoping to even the odds somewhat. The enemy commander came on line quickly.

"Attention ESUN shuttle! You have a choice on how you will be useful to us. You can either let yourselves be captured and ransomed, getting us a lot of money, or you can die, and create a lot of confusion that we can take advantage of. What do you say?"

"Go to hell, asswipe!" Relena answered, using the strongest language that she felt that she could.

"Ha ha ha ha..." the enemy commander couldn't help but laugh at the Foreign Minister's response. "Minister Darilan, it's my great pleasure to be able to tell you to get a place ready there for me, as that's where you'll be shortly."

His Taurus raised its beam cannon and started to charge up for a blast, and all of its cronies did likewise, preparring to fire beam rifles and cannons. But as it was doing so, the Preventers became aware of a strange phenomenon. Several suits, all on a direct line to the command Taurus, were suddenly being crushed or ripped apart. A giant shadow seemed to rear up in front of that Taurus just as it fired. The blast travelled approximately three mobile suit lengths before crashing into something intangible, or at least invisible.

"NOOOOOOOOO!!!" the pirate commander screamed as his suit was ripped in half around him.

True to the footage that Wufei's Taurus had captured, the Gundam then revealed its full arsenal of weaponry, with one thing that hadn't been in the last battle. The right arm revealed itself to be a dragon claw, and the shield attatched itself to the Gundam's upper left arm as it wielded the mega beam saber in its left hand. Everyone on the shuttle or its escorting Taurus suits just watched in horrified fascination as it then went on a rampant orgy of destruction.

Moving too fast to follow, it jetted around the battlefield, slashing a Leo here, vaporizing a Taurus there, blasting another Leo somewhere else. Within a matter of seconds the entire attacking pirate force, carriers included, had been reduced to space debris. It then put away its many weapons and sped away. But Lady Une wasn't about to let it get away so easily. Quickly transforming her Taurus into high-speed mode, she zipped after the Gundam in a futile pursuit.

They had soon left the shuttle far behind, and the Gundam was almost out of her sensor range, when it did a very strange thing. Performing an abrupt 180 degree turn, it shot straight for her. It was upon her before she had a chance to realize what exactly was happening, and it grabbed the Taurus with its deadly hands. But instead of crushing her, it merely flipped her around so that she faced the same direction as it did, keeping its hands on her at all times.

It accelerated, unbelievably enough. As if it weren't going fast enough already, the Gundam's wing binders opened up fully and spat out incredible bursts of power. As they headed back the way that they had come from, Lady Une looked at the readouts on her Taurus' condition. Even in its streamlined mode the speed was too much for it and it was beginning to break apart under the stresses put upon it. She could already see the shuttle convoy ahead, so fast were they going. They were nearly upon the startled politicians and Preventers when the Gundam suddenly deccelerated, nearly ripping apart Lady Une's Taurus in the process. It dumped her unceremoniously in front of the shuttle. It then transmitted a text screen to all observers before speeding away in a completely different direction than it did the first time.

Relena finally tore her eyes away from the Gundam, allowing herself to read the message it had transmitted.

_For I came into this world with my legs forward,  
And teeth hadst I in my head when I wast born,  
Which plainly signified  
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog,  
And that I camest to bite the world._

Fear me indeed, for I am Acheron.

She collapsed back into her chair in exhaustion. Clearly people up here had decided that they would use Mobile Suits once again to wage their battles, no matter what the ESUN might say. She needed no further proof of the nonsensical will to fight of some people than the massive pirate fleet, or the deadly Gundam that had so quickly destroyed them.

Heero, she asked mentally, are you a party to all this madness?

********************************************************************************** 

When Relena emerged from the shuttle alongside the President of the ESUN, she was not at all surprised to see Heero standing among those waiting to greet her. He was indeed as Mariemaia had described him, smartly dressed and charmingly modest. He managed to insert himself into the limo provided for her, since no one could really refuse the Chief Representative. The President also joined them, along with Mariemaia, but when Heero spoke it was exclusively to her.

"I must say, Foreign Minister," he said softly, "that you have aged beautifully."

"Thank you." she replied, forgetting for the moment that he was one of the primary causes for stress in her life right now. "You too have matured handsomely."

He smiled disarmingly, and Relena wondered why she had been forced to miss seeing him for the last seven years.

"Like you said, thanks. If you're this nice to someone who's caused you more headaches than anyone else ever had, I can't wait to see how nice you are to someone who's been continuously in your good books."

Mariemaia smiled covertly to herself. It was good to see that, after all these years, those two still loved each other. The President looked down on them and smiled, remembering the carefree days of his own youth.

********************************************************************************** 

Trowa had also arrived at the L1 Cluster, in a Serpent that he had managed to hide away following the Mariemaia incident. Lady Une called together all of her Preventers, and the three Gundam pilots who were present and supported her. She addressed them grimly.

"We now have to face the prospect that Heero has a Gundam powerful enough to single-handedly destroy the entire forces of OZ and White Fang at their heights."

Mariemaia put up her hand to ask permission to speak. When Lady Une nodded to her she commented,

"But it couldn't have been Heero piloting that Gundam."

"How could it not?" she asked rhetorically, and went on to explain her logic. "There were only ever nine people who had the skill to pilot the Gundams; Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, Zechs, His Excellency, myself, and Noin. His Excellency is dead, so I doubt that he was able to control that suit. I was in a Taurus during that battle, so I'm out. Zechs and Noin are currently on their way from Mars and aren't due here for another couple of days at the earliest. Quatre's commanding the Maguenacs at the L4 cluster. Duo and Wufei were here at the time, getting ready to launch, and they met it earlier, so it couldn't have been them."

"Hey!" Duo exclaimed indignantly. "You said it was a Taurus!"

Wufei shrugged.

"It would have done you no good to know anyway. You probably would have panicked and blabbered it to the first person who asked you, and it would have ended up on the news within a couple of hours."

"As I was saying..." Lady Une said pointedly, tapping her foot. "That leaves Heero and Trowa. And since Trowa was on his way in his Serpent..."

"But," Mariemaia insisted, "it couldn't have been Heero. Wufei and I were talking to him when news came that you were under attack. The Gundam appeared only seconds after we ran out of his office, and if he's that fast then we might as well kiss our asses goodbye."

"Mariemaia Une!" Lady Une said severly as the rest of the Preventers smothered sniggers at the young teen's language. "You will not use that kind of language. Understood?"

"Don't even try that on me, young lady!"

"Yes mother." Mariemaia said in the smallest voice that she could possibly manage.

While everyone else was smiling at the latest incarnation of an age old parent/child conflict, Lady Une turned to Sally.

"What about the message that the Gundam left before leaving?" she asked, then qualified, "For the second time."

"Well," Sally said, "it seems as if we've got a real poet on our hands here. The first bit is a clever rearrangement of a Shakespearian speech made by the man who would shortly become Richard III, in the final scene of King Henry VI Part III."

"Shakespeare?" Lady Une asked, and everyone who had gone to school shuddered involuntarily at the mention of that name. "What about the second part?"

"The Acheron was the river that the ancient Greeks believed that the souls of the dead had to cross over before they could reach the afterlife, quite an impressive name, really. This second part seems to just be a statement of who this person is, or possibly they're naming their Gundam, either way it's very cryptic."

"No argument there. So what we're apparently faced with is some unknown poetic ace pilot?"

"Seems that way." Sally confirmed.

"Damn." Lady Une swore, forgetting her recent admonishing of her daughter, "I absolutely hate mysteries. They have a way of suddenly turning really nasty on you. Our top priority now is to find out what's going on with all these Mobile Suits, including our mystery pilot. We'll leave Heero to Relena, I'm sure that she can handle him."

"I'm sure that she wouldn't complain." Mariemaia said, _de sotto_, evoking a ripple of laughter.

********************************************************************************** 

Actually, Relena felt like doing nothing else but sitting down and ranting about how Heero drove her absolutely crzy. She had just come off another public meeting with him, where he made her remember how much she had loved her, but then proceeded to rip apart the military position that she had supported for as long as she had been involved in the world's political scene. And the worst bit was that he was so nice about it, almost as if he actually loved her, but would rather do without her political ideas.

And when had he learned to be so charming? He was so handsome and suave that he had the female reporters just hanging off his every word, and had she not been technically opposed to him, Relena wasn't sure that she would do much better than them. As she salked towards her limo, she was stopped by a gentle yet firm hand on her shoulder. She spun around, years of political experience working to automatically compose her features, and came face-to-face with the source of most of her headaches.

"Miss Relena," he said formally, "I happened to feel a little hungry after our discussion, and I was wondering if you would care to join me for a bite to eat?"

_Is he asking me out?_ Relena's mind screamed insanely. _Is he crazy? He's the enemy, and he wants to have lunch with me?_

Aloud, she managed,

"Sure."

It seemed a little weak, so she hastily added,

"I was feeling somewhat hungry anyway."

He smiled, and all the years seemed to just melt away. It was as if she had just met him all over again. Stress forgotten, she stepped into his car, already looking forward to lunch.

********************************************************************************** 

About six hours later the Preventers had found what they were looking for. It was a large section in the bowels of the colony that was completely sealed off except for at certain points. The section was walled with Neo-Titanium, an expensive feat, but one that sent a clear message.

Don't mess with what's inside.

According to Lady Une, this was where Doctor J had run his operation out of. The fact that it was larger than the original OZ records indicated, added to the apparently recently added Neo-Titanium walls, seemed to clearly show that someone was using it as a base of operations. It took them two hours to breach the walls and enter the enormous labratory that was contained inside them, but when they did, they found that they had hit the jackpot.

Stockpiles of Gundanium, Mobile Suit blueprints and spare parts, huge tanks full of high-grade fuel, the whole nine yards. And although in the old section there were many sets of fingerprints, in the newer parts there was only one set.

Heero's.

It looked like they had found their man. And, to make matters worse, the blueprints on the computer included those of the Mercurius and the Vayeate, as well as pictures of the huge mystery Gundam. The pictures were all labelled "Acheron", seemingly confirming their guess as to the name of the Gundam.

********************************************************************************** 

Lady Une marched, with Sally, Mariemaia, Hilde , Duo, Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei, down the hall of the office building floor used by Heero as his campaign headquarters. Without even knocking, they entered, hoping to surprise their prey.

Heero was working at his desk, writing out a letter that none of them could read from where they stood. He didn't even look up when they entered, he simply ignored them and kept on writing.

"Alright Heero," Lady Une said impatiently. "we've played your little game long enough. Now it's time for you to do some talking."

"Really?" Heero asked. He put his pen down neatly and looked up nonchalantly at the group of angry intruders. "And if I decide to simply laugh at you instead, what will you do then?"

This rather provocative response caused everyone but Mariemaia to draw a gun, and Mariemaia would have done so too had she been allowed a gun.

"Then we'll have to do this the old fashioned way." said Lady Une grimly. "Now, tell us what you've been doing for the past few years."

"Soul searching." Heero answered. "Difficult though that may be to believe. I spent the last few years coming to the realization that I was trapped by other people's dreams and desires, and that it was time for me to seize control of my life."

"And what exactly is your dream?" Sally asked skeptically.

"Ah, wouldn't you love to know that? Well, I think that I'll actually come clean and tell you." He rose to his feet, and suddenly that charm that he had displayed lately only made the terrible directness that he had always possessed that much more frightful. "I see that the colonies, that the entire earth sphere is vulnerable. Total disarmament is completely unfeasible, you just need to look at the pirate raids to show that."

"But you started that!" Hilde protested.

"Precisely." Heero said as if that proved his point. "I started it in the most bloodless and restrained way possible, and within a month there were over twenty seperate pirate groups spread out across the whole earth sphere. Don't you see? Total pacifism will never work because the warmongers will merely go underground and bide their time until the righteous are too weak to fight back."

"That's a rather cynical way of looking at it," Lady Une said, "but supposing that you do have a point, where do you fit in?"

"Ah, Anne," Heero said, making himself the first person to use Lady Une's given name in a long time. "you always were direct to a point. Firey Une? Remember? Oh, how his Excellency despaired of you. You were a constant embarrassment to him and to his code of honour." Lady Une went very stiff, but Heero continued before she could say anything. "I fit in as the person with both the strength and the vision to safely protect the colonies. Of all the major players on the political scene who actually have a vision beyond their own aggrandizement, I am the only one who is actually true to himself."

"But Relena..." Duo interjected, only to be cut off by Heero's scathing retort.

"What about her, indeed? She follows the path that her father and her brother laid out for her. What about it, garbage picker? Oh, how low indeed the 'god' of death has stooped, to make himself the servant of the christian God, while at the same time picking through the refuse and cast-offs of society."

As Duo too stiffened, Heero turned his attention on the rest of his enemies.

"And you Sally, oh God do you make me laugh. You're the biggest street whore that I've ever known. Have you stopped flirting on other guys yet? I know that no matter when I saw you you always had a special smile for me and for any other man around. As for you Wufei, you're so pathetic. Your self-obsession and gynophobia make it impossible for you to possess real strength. I wouldn't say that you two deserve each other, but rather that you don't deserve anyone else. And don't get me started on you, Trowa. You're just a-"

The rest of his words were drowned out by the report of Wufei's gun. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! The bullets were powerfull enough to go through Heero's body and shatter the glass behind where he stood. He kept on firing convulsively into Heero's chest to get him to shut up, but Heero kept talking as if the bullets hadn't even hit him.

"...making moon eyes at your sister, for God's sake!" Heero finished his rant on Trowa and moved on to Mariemaia. "And if it isn't the world's most gullible despot, returned to save the colonies from the dangers of the militarization that she secretly supports! Why, I-"

"Where are you Heero?" Trowa asked quietly.

Heero stopped in mid-rant and stared at Trowa. So did everyone else, so shocked were they by the apparently nonsensical question. Heero merely laughed and picked up a TV remote and turned the set in the corner on. Everyone except Trowa was even more surprised to see live coverage of today's Armaments Conference, with Heero featuring prominently in the verbal battles.

"Kudos to you, Trowa." said 'Heero'. "It seems that you were the only person with enough brains to figure out that bullets, even if ignored, should leave a mess in one's suit. But even though you may have figured out this little ruse, you're still far too late to stop me."

The holo-image disappeared amidst a fit of maniacal laughter, leaving the thoroughly chastised Preventers to deal with the new situation. Obviously Heero was more than ready for them, but could they manage to put together enough of a plan to defeat him. Right now, he certainly did seem unstoppable.

********************************************************************************** 

"...And so I would say that this current crisis, rather than pointing towards any need for a permanent mobile suit force, instead highlights the absolute neccessity of eliminating all traces of the massive amounts of weaponry that was the legacy of the last century. Only with that accomplished, can we hope to move on without looking over our shoulders at the scepter of our dead comrades. Thank you."

Relena sat down. What had seemed to be a futile struggle against Heero's momentum had been turned, at least temporarily, into a stalemate. Relena happened to be the only person as universally respected as Heero, and her strong position on the elimination of all weaponry was at least providing some base of resistance against the other's proposals for a defense force.

But Heero was incredibly cunning. He had not spent his entire time in office simply harping for one thing, but had enacted several high profile social programs. Increased state support of orphaned children and encouraging inter-colony trade were two of the major programs that he had used his position as Chief Representative to pass. The result was, of course, that he had drawn many of the people who were undecided about the main issue to his side, simply out of support of his other programs.

Right now, Heero was about to get up and deliver his verbal counter. It seemed endless, like a game of ping-pong with the support of the massed bureaucrats. The delegates would generally always support the person who had spoken last, because both made such strong cases that it was impossible for the common politician to decide which one they actually agreed with. Just before Heero could speak, the doors to the hall opened and in filed armed police and Preventers. Lady Une and the L1 Police Chief strode up to Heero.

"Mr. Yuy," the Chief said, "I'm afraid that you are charged with multiple counts of piracy and conspiracy, as well as possession of banned weapons and possibly murder. The charges will be individually clarified at an arraignment hearing later. Now, could you come with us please?"

Heero looked at him and laughed.

"Actually, no, I won't. I have a speech to make, and since I'm not actually being placed under arrest, I'll say what I have to say before deciding whether or not to go along with you."

Heero rose to his full height, surprising Lady Une, who had always thought that she would look down upon him. There was something different about Heero now than there had been before the police had entered. The self-assurance was still there, but it was complemented now by a sense of dread purpose. He brushed past the Police Chief and Lady Une and stepped up to the podium.

"Ladies and Gentlemen. I must thank you for all coming to this conference to decide what course of action the colonies would take in order to protect themselves. It seems however, that the time for words is over, and the choice has been made for you. The charges leveled against me are impressive, but ultimately misleading. I had recieved word several months ago that bands of pirates were restoring Mobile Suits in order to have a trump card that merchants couldn't protect themselves against. So what did I do? I built my own fleet of Mobile Suits, and used them against the pirates. I admit that I did test their capabilities out on civilian craft, but I want to point out that no one was ever killed or even injured in those raids."

The entire assembly sat in shocked silence. While they had been debating proposals, it turned out that the Chief Representative had already taken matters into his own hands. Heero continued lecturing to his rapt audience.

"Faced with these huge bands of marauders, what sane person can deny the need for a force to protect us from them and from any like them? Even now, those profiteering gluttons mass to destroy this colony. Every space pirate is arrayed against us now. For if this place is destroyed, all the leaders of the Earth Sphere will die, and in the subsequent anarchy no-one will be able to oppose them. Is what I have done, to build weapons for the purpose of defending the people of this and every other colony, is that a crime? Possibly. Is it wrong? Hardly."

He turned to Relena, and his next words were for her, although everyone could hear them.

"Vice Foreign Minister, even you have acknowledged as you matured that it is occasionally neccessary to fight in order to protect that which we have. Think now on what I am proposing, not an army, not some private military force, but rather a force that will be capable of such a fight. To fight the good fight, as it were. Relena, you were once Queen of the world, and you attempted to use that position for the good of all humanity. Can you not see what I am trying to achieve now?"

She sat, as shocked as the rest of the delegates, and wondered about his words. Then, it all clicked into place. Chief Representative was only part-way for Heero. His true goal was to rule the world, albeit benevolently. She looked at him, wide-eyed and only half-believing. He merely smiled gently back, and then turned back to the assembled politicians.

"Thank you all for listening to me. And now, allow me to prove myself and show you just how dedicated to this vision I am."

And with that he strode down the aisle, past the shocked policemen. The Preventers had already been through the rough shock of the revelation of Heero's plans, and so they attempted to stop him at the door, but he just smiled at them as if they were little children.

"Face it," he said softly. "if you kill me, you'll be publically demonized, and also there will be no one to fight off the pirates. If you let me go, you will have no more chances to stop me from achieving my vision."

"Who said anything about killing you?" Duo asked.

"How else do you think that you lot will be able to stop me?" Heero replied derisively.

He pushed effortlessly through them, and they were amazed by his physical strength. He walked out to his car and drove off, leaving the conference in an uproar. Lady Une came over and talked to the other Preventers.

"It seems that Heero was right. The colony's long-range scanners have picked up a huge flotilla of Mobile Suit carriers coming our way. We had better get our suits ready, although it'll be a hopeless battle unless Heero helps out."

"What about Zechs and Noin?" Hilde asked.

"I don't know. I think that they're still on their way, and I'm not sure if they'll be able to get here in time. Quatre and the Maguenacs have been alerted of this, but again, I'm not sure if they'll reach us in time to make a difference."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Duo said with his usual pointless optimism. "Let's get suited up! Boy, if this isn't at least something like the old days, outnumbered by several thousand to one."

********************************************************************************** 

The nine Taurus suits and two Serpents of the Preventers stood arrayed against ten times that number of carriers alone, and each carrier held about twenty Mobile Suits. None of them held any delusions about the outcome of this battle. Without Gundams, they had no chance against such crushing numbers.

"Oh well," Lady Une said in resignation. "let's get this over with."

They were about to charge the pirate armada when suddenly the space between their forces and the pirates shimmered. Quickly, the form of a heavily customized Mobile Suit carrier materialized. The thing sported beam cannon turrets and missile racks, and a specialized blue, white, and red paint scheme. Without further ado, the thing opened up its bay doors and started launching Mobile Suits.

The Mercurius and Vayeate Suits emerged first, two of each. Next came what seemed to be a heavily beweaponed version of each of the Mercurius and the Vayeate.

"The Shuivan models..." Lady Une said in awe. "Upgraded versions of the Mercurius and the Vayeate, designed after the battle of the original models with the Wing Zero. I didn't know that they were ever built."

"They weren't." came Heero's cold voice over the comm channels. "But some morons left the plans lying around were they could be easily acquired. It only took me a month to build each of them. They're nothing really, when you think about my personal suit."

Right on cue, the Gundam Acheron dropped from its bay, gleaming magnificiently. After it several Taurus and Virgo II suits also dropped out of the carrier, painted blue, white, and red just like the rest of Heero's suits. The individual colour scheme varied from suit to suit, but there could be mistaking the fact that Heero was making a statement.

Only strong forces ever bothered to have their own colour scheme.

"Sit back, amateurs." Heero mocked them over the comm. "And watch the expert at work."

All of his suits, and even the carrier, sped into the midst of the pirates. They were doing damage on a massive scale, and it was then that Trowa made an interesting observation.

"So that's how he was able to keep this whole thing secret."

"What do you mean?" Lady Une asked, puzzled as to what he was getting at.

"Look at his 'allies'. Especially at the Mercurius and Vayeate suits."

"Hey," Duo exclaimed, catching on. "they fight just as if you and Heero were piloting them!"

"Precisely." Trowa said, vindicated. "He's been using Mobile Dolls. They're loyal to only one person, and they'll never disobey. He's really prepared to use them to take over the world, and use his silver tongue to justify it. Come on, we've got to get involved in this fight. Maybe in the confusion of a three-way battle, we'll be able to destroy the larger portion of Heero's suits."

********************************************************************************** 

And so began the most epic and confusing battle ever fought in space. Although the Preventers and Heero were greatly outnumbered by the pirates, their superior skills and suits allowed them to cut through them as if they were nothing.

The Gundam Acheron was a raging god of destruction, cutting down everything in its path mercilessly. The shield, with the twin buster rifle tucked neatly on the underside, flew off on its own, controlled by Heero at a distance thanks to the Zero system. It rained down blows with its heat rods on those who attempted to get in its way until it reached its desired position, from whence it opened fire, sweeping away dozens of suits and carriers with a single blast.

The Acheron itself was just as lethal. Wielding it mega beam saber in its left fist, and with the right arm in dragon claw mode, it cut a wide swathe of devastastation wherever it went. And since it was very fast and maneuverable, it went almost everywhere.

Wufei ducked his Taurus back suddenly, narrowly missing being incinerated by the twin columns of fire pouring from the Acheron's dragon claw, a weapon that he felt was rightly his. A couple of pirates weren't so lucky, but at least vaporization is a quick, if somewhat painful, way to die. Wufei jetted back in at the Acheron, a beam saber in each hand, and started to hack and slash viciously. Only using his mega beam saber, Heero blocked or dodged each attack, and then launched his counter-attack, a flurry of blows so fast that Wufei was hard pressed to keep his suit intact. Say what you might about the sanity of the Acheron's pilot, he was still the best there was, and his suit was leagues ahead of anything else on the field.

Trowa faced off against the Vayeate Shuivan. The major problem with the Mercurius and Vayeate dolls was that they worked in pairs, covering each other's vulnerable spots. But Trowa had managed to isolate this one while its partner dealt with a couple of pirate Leos. He quickly jinked his Serpent to the side to avoid the blasts from the Shuivan's two massive beam cannons. He fired right back, with his twin gatling in his right hand and his beam cannon in his left. Of course, since he was facing a copy of himself, it avoided him in a similar manner. But it was only a copy, so when Trowa innovated and fired a loose cone spray of bullets, it was caught off guard and Trowa was rewarded with a lucky bullet shattering its main sensor eye.

Mariemaia blasted the arm off of a Leo, and was surprised when a beam saber cut through it from behind, finishing off the job. But when the red Mercurius came through the wreckage for her, Mariemaia learned what panic really meant. At the last second though, the arc of the red monster's large beam saber was blocked by another saber, this one held by a Taurus. As Lady Une tried to concentrate on keeping the damn thing from killing her daughter, she was plagued by the guilt she felt because she was the one who had ordered it to be designed and built. As she drew her second beam saber, she noticed the blue Vayeate moving into position behind her.

Duo was not enjoying round two against the Mercurius and the Vayeate, although the experience was a little better for Hilde. Duo's main cause for concern was that, unlike last time, he didn't have Deathscythe. Another contributing factor to his worries was the fact that although he was managing to hold the gold Mercurius off, the was only so long that Hilde could keep dodging the massive blasts from the green Vayeate.

Sally and the four other Preventers were busy trying to defeat the Mercurius Shuivan. The damned thing was nigh on impossible to kill, and the fact that it flew like Heero did only made matters worse. It had so many defensors that shooting at it was an exercise in futility. At least it only had the one beam saber, otherwise they would have been in serious trouble.

Trowa was really suprised for a moment when he saw the Vayeate Shuivan get its bearings back after a minute, but then it clicked that it must be uploading the data from the mother ship. But, he reasoned, that data upload would give it a minute delay that he could use to his advantage. He made as if to retreat, then sprang forward as it attempted to pursue him. He was now so close that it didn't have a chance of dodging, and so when his beam cannon blew a hole through the cockpit area, the duel was over. His ammo supplies were low though, so he did the most daring thing that he had ever done. He headed back to the colony to reload, but he did dispatch a couple of pirates on the way who had somehow managed to break away from the killer battlefield.

Fortunately for Lady Une, the Vayeate's entire atention was focused in that moment upon her, and so it wasn't able to dodge the spray of that Mariemaia fired upon it from behind. Most of the suit was mode out of Gundanium, so for the most part the bullets just bounced harmlessly off, but a considerable amount of the barrage hit the vulnerable energy collector. Left suddenly without a weapon, the Vayeate charged her, attempting to use the barrel of the now useless beam cannon as a club. Lady Une sped in behind it and stuck a beam saber through its torso, finishing it off. Mariemaia saw that her mother's attack had left her exposed to the Mercurius, so she provided cover fire by spraying it with gatling fire, forcing it to remain on the defensive. While it was occupied with her, Lady Une whipped up behind it and cut into it's body with both of her beam sabers.

One of the major impediments faced by Duo and Hilde was that their Taurus suits didn't have beam sabers, and so they had to play a constant dodging game. Eventually, one time when the Mercurius was busy trying to chase Hilde down, Duo managed to put a shot from his beam canon into the Vayeate's shoulder, knocking off its left arm. Although this didn't affect the suit's performance much, it did mean that the thing was always slightly off balance and it couldn't balance the beam cannon so well, resulting in rather poor aim. One of the haywire shots, by sheer coincidence, narrowly missed Hilde and put itself in the path of the Mercurius, which wasn't able to get its defensors up in time. As it dissappeared in a puff of molten metal, Duo pressed home his advantage and fired another beam cannon shot, this one cutting the blue 'Doll in half and ending its latest incarnation.

Managing to get a glancing blow in on Wufei, Heero then disengaged suddenly. His shield flew back to his arm, and he drew the twin buster rifle. He was really proud of this latest one, because he had seen to it that it had 20% more power than even the Wing Zero's main weapon had possessed. Since all of his 'Dolls had been destroyed except the Mercurius Shuivan, and that had enough defensors to successfully withstand even Acheron's full might, he no longer had any compunctions against wiping all of these weaklings out with one solid blast. As bright pinpoints of light began to float around and towards the twin nozzles, Heero felt immense satisfaction in knoingthe panic that his former allies must be feeling as they realised just how imminent their deaths were.

********************************************************************************** 

Relena had been monitoring the battle from the colony's control centre, although much of the fighting was being broadcast on the large TV's situated throughout the colony. She had not been surprised to find out that it was actually Heero who was piloting the great Gundam Acheron, but she was surprised to find that he had rigged his office as a holo-projector and had used an AI programmed with his personality to talk to everyone. That was a degree of subtlety that none of tehm had expected from him, and they had paid for underestimating their adversary.

And, Relena had to admit as she watched Acheron's incredible performance, she felt a certain amount of pride watching the one man that she cared about single-handedly take on the whole world. And nearly win. But now she felt apprehension grow as well. Most of the pirates had been eliminated, along with almost all of Heero's Mobile Dolls, and now Heero looked set to start a wholesale slaughter of the Preventers.

Almost unnoticed were the two Mobile Suits that sped out of deep space towards the furious conflict. They only were finally noticed when one of them accelerated even more and crossed practically all the distance between where he was and Acheron. This too was a large suit, but it didn't fit any clear records on the database, although it did look like the Tallgeese III. Relena felt her heart tie itself into knots. It seemed that her brother and her love were about to duel again, but this time their roles were reversed from the Eve Wars of AC 195, with Milliardo protecting the people of the earth and the colonies, and Heero seeking to dominate them.

Placing itself in the path of Heero's twin buster rifle, the Tallgeese split open its dober beam cannon and charged it for a blast of its own. Both suits stared each other down for a fraction of a moment before opening fire. The clash of the Titans had begun.

********************************************************************************** 

The huge beams met halfway between the two huge Mobile Suits, and their interface was a crash of pure devastation. Shockwaves reached the colony and shook it around, so powerful were the energies released longitudinally. When they had finished, both suits changed their weapons, the Tallgeese by discarding its cannon, the Acheron by tucking it back into place under the shield.

"Heero." said the familiar voice of Zechs over the comm. "You may be strong, but Tallgeese Kai is strong enough to stand up to you."

Indeed, Zechs had made some very extensive modifications to the Tallgeese III. The most obvious ones were in the weaponry. The Epyon's mega beam saber and wrist-mounted heat rod had been transferred over to Zech's newest Mobile Suit. A pair of short beam cannons, similar to the ones used by the Leo Command Type, had been installed one on either side of the neck. Also, the flight system had been apparently enhanced, and consequently the Tallgeese Kai was now much faster than any of it predecessors. Most of the old Titanium armour plates had also been replaced with Gundanium or Neo Titanium, making it much more durable than it had been in previous incarnations. And the last feature, not immediately obvious, was the transfer of the Epyon's Zero System to further enhance the pilot's performance. All in all, it was definately a suit capable of challenging the Acheron.

"Perhaps." Heero replied with his usual stony calm. "But, I think not. Prepare yourself Zechs. I held back last time, for Relena's sake. This time, I will not be so generous."

And with that both suits were off to the races, charging each other, clashing momentarily, then returning for another go at each other. They each had exactly matching close combat weapons, a mega beam saber in the right hand, a regular beam saber in the left, and a pair of heat rods. Their lighter ranged weapons had proven ineffective against each other, as their armour was more than strong enough to deflect anything short of large calibre beam cannons, or direct beam saber strokes, but Heero's back-mounted beam cannons did have Zechs a little worried, and he wasn't sure if they would be able to hurt him, but they could certainly shake him up a bit.

Trowa finished refilling and headed back out as quickly as possible. He knew that, despite the apparent equal footing of the two duelists, Zechs was actually doomed. Not only was Heero's suit faster and stronger, but Heero was also now a better pilot than he had been even in their last encounter, whereas Zechs had long since reached the peak of his prowess. It might be deceptive, but an experienced soldier could easily see that rather than merely attacking and counter-attacking evenly, Zechs was forced to spend most of his time warding off killer blows. Something had to be done if their champion was to survive, let alone win against the impossible enemy, and that something had to be done soon.

Wufei realized that he had no chance of even keeping up with Heero and Zechs at this point, so he concentrated instead on the Mercurius Shuivan. Zipping in past Sally's shoulder, he engaged it hand to hand. It moved quickly, and its beam saber was far more powerful than his were, but he was winning against it as surely as Heero was winning against Zechs. The constant barrage by Sally and the other Preventers who were still in the fight kept its defensors occupied, and ao it gradually became more and more disadvantaged against Wufei until he finally broke through. One of his beam sabers scored a deep slash down the left side of its torso, leaving it reeling. Pressing his advantage, Wufei hacked and slashed until he broke through once again and managed to cut so deeply into its waist that it was nearly cut in half. It struggled for only a few more minutes before finally giving up and dying. Wufei smiled to himself, at least he was able to beat that incarnation of Heero, and that was a start.

********************************************************************************** 

Relena's face appeared on the comm screen in the Acheron's cockpit. As she looked worriedly at the only man who had loved her despite opposing ideologies and vastly different lifestyles, Heero continued to pummel her brother mercilessly.

"Heero." she said simply.

"Relena." he acknowledged.

"Why do you continue to fight us? You have eliminated the pirates, the enemies of all of us, so why continue? Aren't you just destroying potential allies?"

"Relena, I follow my destiny, my own destiny, and it is a road that I must travel alone for most of the way. That is why I used the 'Dolls, and that is why I didn't even try to involve Wufei with me, although he would love the prospect of battle. No, none of these that I face is my ally. They will always oppose me, for they have not come free of the conditioning that has been placed upon them."

"So you're going to kill my brother?"

"He's in my way." Heero answered simply.

"I'm in your way." Relena pointed out. "Am I then your enemy too? Are you going to eliminate me Heero?"

The faintest of smiles crossed Heero's face, visible even over his look of concentration on the battle at hand.

"You know that I could never do that." He acually looked up from his instruments, although he was still able to administer a thrashing to her brother. "What do you say, Relena? Will you join me on the path I tread? Will you be my queen? It's long past time that you freed yourself from the vision imposed upon you by your father and brother?"

"Relena, no!" Zechs called desperately over the comm. "Think about it! Do you really want to endorse this madness?"

"Don't worry, brother." Relena replied calmly. "I have no doubt that Heero is actually quite sane. But I don't think that I can support him now. I am no longer the idealist that I once was, but I have thought about it and I have decided that the path, as you put it, that I walk on is the correct one. I love you so much Heero, but I can't bring myself to agree with you on this issue. I'm sorry, but it just can't be."

"Very well then. I guess that I'll see you shortly." Heero said.

With that he cut the connection and redoubled his offensive on the beleaguered Zechs. Relena sighed. It did indeed appear that they would all shortly be serving under Heero's rule. But if he did bring peace and security to the world in his own way, was that so bad? Relena couldn't put aside the mental worrying that assaulted her.

If he won, her world would be shattered, and her brother and friends would be dead. If he lost, then she lost her love. It really was a devil's alternative.

********************************************************************************** 

Heero finally scored the first hit of their duel, a glancing blow off of the Tallgeese's neck that destroyed one of the short beam cannons. It didn't get any beeter for Zechs, and within minutes Heero lopped off his left arm at the elbow, depriving him of a beam saber and a heat rod. The end certainly did seem to be in sight now for Zechs, but at that minute Trowa set his plan into motion. As he sprayed bullets and beam cannon blasts at the Acheron, he called out to all the Preventers,

"Guys! We have to join in and help Zechs out, no matter how ineffective we might seem. All we have to do is distract him long enough for Zechs to do some damage back. Remember that if the Tallgeese is destroyed, we have no hope of defeating him."

The speech and the attacks provoked exactly the response from Heero that he had guessed at. The Acheron immediately disengaged from the reeling Tallgeese and sped towards Trowa's Serpent, firing with its beam cannons, head vulcans, shoulder gatlings, and wing vulcans.

"I think that that's more than enough out of you Trowa." Heero said grimly. "Much though I hate to do this to a good friend, your death will prove that none of you can hope to challenge my power."

It was all that Trowa could do to avoid being hit by the barrage that Heero was giving off as he charged, but he barely managed it. Then, to the utter surprise of everyone, he stopped and stood motionless instants before Heero reached him. Ignoring the hits that Heero scored, he raised his twin gatlings and his beam cannon, and popped open his shoulder missile racks. He had figured out that Heero had installed built-in defensors into the Acheron's armour, much like the ones that the old Deathscythe Hell had in its cloak, in order to guarantee that nothing could even scratch him. Trowa figured that a sudden overwhelming barrage delivered at point-blank range should be sufficient to overload the defensors and damage the Acheron, and the range would make it impossible for the Acheron to employ its otherworldly agility and dodge the shots fired at it. For his part, Heero realized what was happening just as Trowa fired everything that he had.

"SHHIIIT!" he managed to scream before the Acheron was blanketed by the attack.

The Acheron shuddered as missiles hit it all over its head, shoulders, and wings, but kept going. Sparks and explosions all over its body reported that Trowa's plan had worked and that the defensor system was now disabled. But the cost that Trowa paid was as high as it could get, for the Acheron plowed into his Serpent at an insane speed, nearly dashing his suit to pieces. As it was, if anyone had survived the mangled wreck that Trowa's Serpent had become it would be a major miracle.

The Acheron may have been badly damaged by Trowa's gambit, but it was by no means out of the fight. Heero wheeled around quickly and faced the other Preventers.

"That may have hurt me badly, but there's still no way that you lot will be able to follow up on Trowa's final brilliant plan. Bring it on, I dare all of you."

Unable to resist such a challenge, Wufei shot forward instantly, determined to take Heero on now that the other was (hopefully) down to his level. Heero counter-charged and while he flew he transferred his mega beam saber back to his left hand and transformed the right arm into dragon claw mode. As he got closer, Wufei noticed that one of the Acheron's eyes was smashed and that half of the face was badly damaged. He also noticed that the Acheron wasn't moving quite as fast as it once had.

"I guess that Trowa really got him good." he muttered to himself. "Let's just hope that it's enough."

As it turned out, it wasn't. Not by a long shot. Heero was just as furious in hand-to-hand as he had been when Wufei faced him minutes ago. And this time he was also trying to skewer and cook Wufei with the dragon claw. Luckily for Wufei, he was joined shortly by Lady Une, and the two of them still proved not to be nearly enough to contain him. With one powerful stroke, Heero cut through Lady Une's Taurus, slicing off one arm and the head. Fortunately for her, the reactor wasn't damaged, and the suit didn't explode.

"Mother!" Mariemaia cried, and launched herself at Heero, the twin gatling in her Serpent's right hand blazing.

Heero just shrugged off the bullets and sent his dragon claw after her. She managed to dodge back out of range of the initial thrust, but when Heero activated the flamethrowers she wasn't so lucky. As her badly charred Serpent dropped out momentarily from the fight, Duo and Hilde jumped in, beam rifles and cannons blazing.

Heero was starting to get a little worried. Bullets and other light weaponry wouldn't scratch the Gundanium armour, but without the defensors the heavier beam cannons could do quite a lot of damage. Cursing Trowa, he brought the Acheron's tail cannons to bear on the pair and let loose, letting the Zero system guide his shooting. Although they were nimble, the two just weren't as good at dodging as Trowa had been, and he managed to catch them quickly. Hilde's Taurus lost a leg to one shot and an arm to the next, putting her out commission, and a lucky hit decapitated Duo's shortly after that.

"Come on!" Zechs cried, charging up behind Heero. "If we all take him on at once, he won't be able to handle us all."

Heero shortly found himself fending off Wufei, who was still trying to defeat him in close combat, and Zechs simultaneously. Sally, Noin, and the couple of Preventers whose Taurus' were still operational joined in with beam sabers or cannons, and it seemed as if the mighty Acheron would indeed finally go down.

But it seemed that such observations were very premature. Opening up with his vulcans and gatlings and what few missiles he had left, Heero quickly evened the odds. The two Preventers were quickly critically damaged, but the failsafes installed in their suits shut the reactors down before they could explode and kill them. Sally ended up on the wrong end of the fearsome dragon claw, and it smashed the upper torso of her suit, ending her participation in the battle.

Zechs found himself unable to get past the flailing heat rods, and Wufei was at an equal impasse with the mega beam saber, but Noin saw her opportunity and charged his back, slashing purposefully. One saber scored a deep hit in one of the wing binders, further reducing its effectiveness, but the other did even more noteworthy damage, and hacked off the stinger tail with its twin beam cannons. Wheeling in fury, Heero used his dragon claw to hold off Zechs and his gatlings on Wufei while he grabbed her suit with both heat rods and sliced it in half, then used the heat rods to fling the two halves in opposite directions. The top half, with the critically damaged reactor, promptly exploded.

Lucrezia! Nooo!" screamed Zechs in disbelief.

Heero was now free to turn his full attention on the only two pilots who he considered worthy of facing him. Attacking furiously, he relentlessly drove them both back. But they had just seen their loved ones dispatched ruthlessly, and they too were possessed with rage. Zechs managed to slip his remaining heat rod through Heero's defense and severed the power line of the mega beam saber, rendering it useless. Heero threw away the the remains of the saber and drew one of the regular beam sabers he had installed in case of this exact event happening. Wufei was being kept at bay by the weapon that had for so long been his trademark, but he was drawing closer and closer to breaking through and scoring hits on the main body of the Acheron.

Mariemaia groaned loudly inside her badly damaged Serpent. She had underestimated the first serious enemy that she had fought, just as her surrogate mother had years ago when she had faced the Shenlong Gundam. Checking over her suit's displays, she found that the twin gatling had been all but destroyed, but that her beam cannon, which had been resting in its holding place along the back of her Serpent's waist, was still fully operational. Discarding the useless gatlings, she slowly drew the beam cannon, a rudimentary plan forming itself in her mind. It would require subtlety, and she knew that if she drew attention to herself, everything would be ruined and she would probably be killed. She was lucky in that the furious hand-to-hand battle had brought the Acheron's back very close to her. Taking careful aim, she waited for the Acheron to stay still for a moment, then she fired.

Even though the Zero system warned him the instant that Mariemaia fired, Heero was too close to her to avoid being hit. The blast hit Acheron squarely in the back of the head, removing said body part completely from the Mobile Suit. Although he had been smart enough to put some secondary sensors in other places, many of those had been destroyed or badly damaged by Trowa's last gambit, and consequently Heero now found himself mostly blind. Quickly he activated the uplink to the carrier, which fortunately the Preventers seemed to have forgottten about, and from the data provided he quickly got back into the fight, although now at a serious disadvantage to Zechs and Wufei due to the slight lag he experienced. Fortunately, the Zero system allowed him to interpret the data as if he were seeing it firsthand, so he wasn't too badly off.

The first thing that he did was fire his wing vulcans at Mariemaia's serpent. The bullets smashed what vital systems were left intact, including the sensor eye, leaving her helpless. Simultaneously he sprayed Wufei with his head vulcans and shoulder gatlings, forcing the former Gundam pilot off balance enough to allow Heero to send his dragon claw punching through his suit's upper body and head area. Wufei had his final revenge though, and although his suit blind and with seconds before his reactor shut down automatically, he brought his beam sabers down and across in an X-pattern. He didn't get to see it, but he succeeded in cutting through the vulnerable extended arm, depriving Heero of yet another weapon.

By this point the Acheron was in a rather sorry state. Its entire body was pock-marked, its head was missing, the stinger tail and the right arm were mere stumps, and one of the wings was so badly damaged that it was now just dead weight. But despite all that damage, it was still able to keep back the Tallgeese. But Heero recognized that he was now the underdog, and that it was just a matter of time before Zechs finally broke through his defense and finished him off. Smiling, Heero activated the one card he still had up his sleeve.

The Zero system warned Zechs almost instantly of the new threat, but he knew that he was helpless against it. Heero was deliberately forcing him to keep his back facing Heero's carrier, which was headed towards him with its guns charging. But the Zero system also alerted him to the pair of odd-looking transports heading towards the battlefield from the direction of the L4 Colony Cluster. He smiled to himself when they launched fourty-one Maguenac Mobile Suits.

"We're here!" announced Quatre.

"About time, too." Zechs grunted back. "Do me a favour, Quatre, and destroy the carrier headed towards me."

"What? Why?" Quatre asked, puzzled.

"Quatre, we don't have time for a history lesson." Relena told him over the comm. "We'll explain later, but you have to destroy that carrier or else Heero will kill Zechs."

"Okay," Quatre acknowledged. "if you say so Relena."

The Maguenacs launched themselves at the carrier, and Heero was forced to alter its directions to destroying them, leaving him disadvantaged once again. Although the carrier managed to knock a couple of the Maguenacs out, it was quickly overwhelmed by Quatre's troops. The Maguenacs then turned to the duel that still raged between the massive Mobile Suits. Heero's shoulder gatlings had destroyed the Tallgeese's remaining short beam cannon, but that cannon's last shot had destroyed one of the shoulder gatlings.

"Heero," Quatre pleaded. "why are you fighting us?"

"Shut up Quatre." Heero snapped back. "You may not realize it, being the weakest and softest of us, but there is a need to maintain some form of protection over the colonies. Otherwise a year or two or maybe ten years down the road you'll face terrorists with weapons that you no longer have, and then you'll pay for your naiveté. I am fighting to make you all aware of that, I am fighting to ensure that your weak-kneed school of thought doesn't inadvertently doom peace."

Quatre was struck speechless. He had missed all the developments between Heero and the Preventers, and so was caught completely unawares by Heero's bitterness and black mood. The Maguenacs however realized that the Acheron was their enemy and set themselves upon the half-dead Gundam. With the destruction of his carrier, Heero was now all but blind, and yet he still managed to fight off his enemies. Zechs realized what it would take to completely defeat his tenacious opponent and disengaged under the cover of the attacking Maguenacs.

With his remaining guns blazing, and his hand-to-hand weapons moving furiously, Heero flew in a random zig-zag pattern, managing somehow to keep on top of the situation. He had opened a channel with the colony's news networks, and that let him see a third person view of the combat. It wasn't very helpful, but Heero was at this point desperate for any means of watching what was happening. Within a minute of the Maguenacs' initial charge, half of them had been damaged beyond combat capability, with the only noticible damage to the Acheron being that its useless wing was ripped off. Quatre faced off against Heero in his customized Maguenac, which was identical to Rashid's except that he held a heat tomohawk in each hand. Even though he knew what Heero was capable of, he was surprised when Heero lashed out instantly with his heat rods. Quatre blocked them each with a heat tomohawk, but he was powerless to prevent Heero from loping off his right arm with his beam saber. In response, Quatre swung his remaining heat tomohawk in and smashed it into Heero's remaining hand, destroying both it and the beam saber that it held.

Heero was by this time waiting for this indignity to be visited upon him, and so he simply raked Quatre's Magunac with gatling fire, destroying the head, and moved on. He still had one last trick hidden, as it were, up his sleeve. A small blade swung out of his forearm, his last resort. Even as he cut up the next Maguenac with it, his remaining shoulder gatling ran out of ammo, and shortly thereafter his wing vulcans were empty too. But that was alright, because the dozen or so Maguenacs that remained had backed off by that point. Wondering what could be happening, Heero was desperately pouring over what little information he had, when the Acheron was rocked by a powerful blast.

The Tallgeese's dober beam cannon blast had hit the Acheron on the left side, breaking the leg and buckling the shield. Heero lost another wing, and both of his heat rods were destroyed by the shot. His remaining arm was jammed covering the cockpit hatch, not that he would have escaped even if he could.

"So, Zechs." Heero said in an eerily calmly. "This is it."

"Yes, it is." Zechs replied grimly.

"You know," Heero continued with that same disquieting calmness, "of all the times we met, I only won once?"

"You won when it counted most."

"Zechs, I have one last request. Place my memorial with my family's graves. I'll send you the epitaph I want on the tombstone."

Zechs glanced at the brief text message for a minute.

"Understood. Goodbye, my peer."

"Noooo!" Relena sobbed. "Zechs, don't! Heero's beaten, there's no need to kill him."

"And what would you do instead, Relena?" Heero asked in that calm tone, the one that showed that he had accepted his fate. "Let me go and build another army? Throw me in jail for the rest of my life?"

"You don't have to keep trying to fight." Relena was barely holding back her tears.

"How can I go on living with a clear conscience if I am completely opposed to the programs of the government? No, this is the end for me. I can only hope for the sake of mankind that you are right and that no one will ever try to wage war again. Goodbye Relena. Remember that I loved you, but don't let that drag you down. Live your life. Live the happy life that you deserve."

"But I want to live it with you." By this point Relena had completely lost control, and tears were flowing down her cheeks. The other occupants of the colony's control room wisely decided to let the Foreign Minister say her goodbyes to her beloved. "Don't leave me. Please." she pleaded.

"I'll always be watching over you." Heero consoled her. "Always. Remember that." His face smiled sadly at her, and everyone who was watching their open conversation was surprised to see a small tear flow down his cheek. "Do it Zechs."

Zechs pulled the trigger on his cannon twice, sending a second blast raining down on the Acheron for good measure. When the first blast hit the Acheron, the remaining armour was stripped away, and the shield was punched through, but the frame of the suit still survived. That was changed by the second blast. It ate away what had been left from the previous blasts, finishing off the Gundam that had been designed to dominate the world.

"**_LIVE!!!_**" Heero screamed as the Acheron was destroyed and its remains sent spinning off into space.

In the colony's control centre, Relena collapsed to the ground in a wet mess, her body racked with sobs.

********************************************************************************** 

Miraculously enough, not a single Preventer or Maguenac had been killed. It seemed that the shut-down failsafes that Noin had installed on them when she had modified them for the battle against the Romefeller Foundation had paid off after all. As for the Maguenacs, by the time they joined the fight the Acheron was too weak amd badly damaged to finish off any of the irrepressible Arabs.

The colony sent out salvage ships to recover the damaged suits as soon as Zechs finished off the Acheron. So exhausted by the battle were they that even Wufei didn't voice a complaint when Duo and Hilde emerged from the wrecks of their Taurus suits. And Lady Une and Mariemaia were relieved to see that they had both survived. Wufei and Sally just sat there, staring at each other, both trying to get over the shock over nearly dying.

Probably the biggest shock of them all was when they had finally cut open the hatch on Trowa's mangled Serpent. They had entered expecting to haul out a corpse, but instead they found a slightly bruised pilot reading a book with a flashlight.

"I guess that Heero didn't hit me hard enough." was all that he said.

Noin too had been incredibly lucky, Heero's mega beam saber had passed through her Taurus merely a couple of feet above the cockpit. Zechs was glad to see that Noin was alright after all, but he also had to console his little sister, who was as mad at him as she was at everything.

"How could you?" Relena had asked him miserably.

"He was ready for it, he didn't want to live in a world that couldn't accept him." Zechs tried to explain.

"It's easy for a soldier to say that." Relena had complained bitterly. "But what about someone who loved him? I'll never be able to live with him, now I don't even have the hope that he'd reappear in my life. That's what kept me going for seven years, but now what?"

"You carry out his last wishes, and get on with your life."

"Just go away. I can't handle this now."

********************************************************************************** 

And so he had left her. She seemed to have put herself mostly back together by the next week, when they held a memorial service for Heero. She had come, along with far more people than they In fact, the memorial service, which they had intended to be a small affair, ended up with what seemed to be half the colony attending. Fortunately, the cemetary had been modified nearly thirty years ago to handle the crowds that would arrive for the first Heero Yuy's funeral. Since no one disputed the fact that this Heero Yuy had also dedicated his life to what he believed was the best way to protect the colonies and earth, at least not openly, he was just as popular with the common man as his uncle had been. As the simple stone was dedicated in his memory, many wept openly, but Relena had got over all of her crying. She was determined to carry out Heero's last wish and get on with her life.

But she could never forget him. His last words had been for her, and even when he had set himself against the whole world, against even his best friends, he had left a place at his side for her.

She couldn't help at least one tear as she kissed the simple memorial before walking away. That tear trickled down the stone facing, running over the letters of his self-written epitaph.

_Heero Yuy, 180-203._

For I came into this world with my legs forward,  
And teeth hadst I in my head when I wast born,  
Which plainly signified  
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog,  
And that I camest to bite the world.

********************************************************************************** 

Deep in the cold blackness of space, inside the charred and mangled corpse of a Mobile Suit, something stirred. The suit's pilot opened his eyes as he regained consciousness, and he looked around. Sunlight filtered in through the cracks that were all over the cockpit, which was otherwise mostly intact.

Inside his space suit, the pilot managed a weak laugh. It was a testament to both his engineering skill and God's gracious will that he was still alive. That any part of his suit had survived at all was amazing, that enough of the torso had remained relatively intact to prevent him from being vaporized was nothing short of miraculous.

Taking a sip of water from the catch tube near his mouth, he began to assess his situation. Considering his personal health, it felt like he was badly bruised all over, but nothing was broken. From what he could see of the sun through the cracks in the cockpit, he started to calculate where he was heading. He appeared to be moving laterally to the sun, with minimal approach or retreat. Since he started at the L1 colony cluster, he guessed from the direction that he had been flug in that he would soon run into either another cluster or the moon.

From there, he would have a chance to start his entire life over. It was actually quite a daunting prospect. But he was ready for any challenge, he could handle anything that tomorrow might throw at him.

Smiling, the pilot laid back his head and closed his eyes. Might as well get some rest, he figured.

  
********************************************************************************** 

**Fin**

********************************************************************************** Comments and suggestions are always welcome.  
[ragnar_murray@hotmail.com][1]

   [1]: mailto:ragnar_murray@hotmail.com



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